RH2019 Frameless: Hyperlinks in footer topic are dead in output

[RoboFan]

Running RoboHelp 2019 new, update 10

Generating Frameless output, with Orange skin

Created a custom footer, as a topic in RoboHelp.

Inserted several links to other topics I created in RoboHelp (e.g., Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, Search Tips).

Assigned my custom footer topic for the home page and topic pages in the skin editor.

Generated output.

Viewed output in web browser.

The custom footer appears correctly when viewing/accessing home page and topics.

Links in the footer are present, but if I click on any of them, I get following error:

Your file was not found

It may have been moved or deleted.

ERR_FILE_NOT_FOUND

Here's the URL of the link target, copied from the browser address window:
file:///C:/Users/RoboFan/Documents/My%20RoboHelp%20Projects/outputs/Trailfinder/Frameless/template/trailfinder/search-tips.htm

Here's the HTML code for the hyperlink, as it appears in the footer topic in the RoboHelp project:
<a class="topic" href="../search-tips.htm">Search Tips</a>

I looked at footer links in a brand new, template project (created by RoboHelp), but those footer links point to example.com.

Thoughts? 

[Peter Grainge]

In a new project the skin has homepagefooter.htm as the default footer. If you use the browse icon alongside you will see it is in the publish folder in your project. I guess you could link to that file and edit it in RoboHelp but I didn't try. It was easier for me to open it in Dreamweaver. I then changed the Contact URL to my own site and generated an output. It worked as expected.

Maybe if you put your topic in that folder and then browse to it, it will then work for you. Let us know.

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www.grainge.org

[RoboFan]

No go. My goal is to have the footer links target/open other topics in the help project - not an external website. While I can edit the output so the hyperlinks will open the target topics, the content in the target topics is displayed without any styling applied (no CSS - just plain Times New Roman) and it takes up the entire browser (no RoboHelp "help" framework - that is, no header, no left panel (TOC/Index/Search/Filter), no right panel (mini-toc, favorites, print, etc.), no footer, etc.).

[Peter Grainge]

Have you tried a relative link to where the topic will be on the server?

I'll give the problem another try but it will not be today?

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www.grainge.org

[RoboFan]

Yes, I tried relative links. They'll load, but I still have to manually copy/paste them into the output. Also, they still don't load within the RH help output construct. The target links only open as a completely unformatted html page. 

I appreciate your attention on this, Peter. Thank you!

[Peter Grainge]

Rename the supplied page and then save your file there. Does that work?

[Peter Grainge]

... applying the default name to your file?

[Peter Grainge]

I tried a number of things before I realised there is a fundamental problem here. Go to www.grainge.org/demos/footers and you hover over the Contact link. You will see it points to my site and will go there if clicked. Now click a topic and you will see www.example.com. It's not carrying through.

Check your project to see if the link changes or whether it stays the same but still doesn't work.

Still poking around.

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www.grainge.org

[Peter Grainge]

Correction. It did go the right place. Shows correct but fails to find it. Sigh.

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www.grainge.org

[Peter Grainge]

Finally a method that seems to work but only on the home page because of a bug.

1. Create your topic in the root of the project. Check Exclude from Search in Properties.
2. Copy the CSS for that topic to the root.
3. Remove the CSS link in the topic and replace it with the one above.
4. Add the topic to the TOC so that it uploads. Check Hide In Output in Properties.
5. Using File Explorer, locate homepagefooter in the source files. It should be in publish/skins/Orange.
6. Open it in a text or HTML editor and change www.example.com to the URL of the topic as it will be on the server.
7. Save, generate and publish.

Go to www.grainge.org/demos/footers and you will see what I have set up. I deliberately didn't hide the topic so that you can see it from the TOC.

Click the Home Page icon top left and then click Contact in the footer and you will see it works as required.

The bug is that if you go to any topic and then hover over Contact, you will see it is pointing to www.example.com.

I haven't got past that yet. Now I have a method, I can try relative links.

Please give that a whirl and see what you can come up with.

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www.grainge.org

[Peter Grainge]

Finally I got a relative link working. 😊

Regretably still only on the home page. 😒

The full URL was http://www.grainge.org/demos/footers/footer.htm

The relative path is ..\..\footer.htm

That was the first thing I tried and it kept failing. At one point I had suspicions that the homepagefooter.htm file was not in sync with the one in the generated folder. That is now working OK but keep checking that if you have issues.

So now the remaining issue is why doesn't the home page reflect these paths once you open any topic.

Please confirm the two demos are at least working how you want.

www.grainge.org/demos/footers

www.grainge.org/demos/footers2

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www.grainge.org

[RoboFan]

Peter,

Both demos work as I would expect/hope. I really appreciate you digging into this. Unfortunately, without a complete solution, I'm going to keep it simple and use footers without links for now. Even if you find a workaround for the topic page footer, this entire process/config isn't intuitive - at least not with the skin custom footer settings and fields provided in RH. As such, I logged a bug. I'll keep monitoring this post to see if you get topic footers working. Thank you! 

[Peter Grainge]

I wish you had help off a bit with the bug report as I now have it working nicely with the footer topic you are creating using the project's main CSS, or whatever one you want.

Go to outputs2 again to see it.

The steps with explanations added are

1. Create your topic in the root of the project. Check Exclude from Search in Properties.
   Creating it in the root might not be necessary but it does make life easier.
   You don't have to exclude the topic from search results but why would you want a user to find it that way. Plus it's a one off task when you create the topic.
2. Copy the CSS for that topic to the root.
3. Remove the CSS link in the topic and replace it with the one above.
   It can be linked to any CSS.
4. Add the topic to the TOC so that it uploads. Check Hide In Output in Properties.
   In 2019 topics only make it to the output if they are in the TOC but you don't want the user to see it. Again this is a one off task and it's not a bug. By design anything that is needed in the output has to be added to the TOC.
5. Using File Explorer, locate homepagefooter in the source files. It should be in publish/skins/Orange.
6. Open it in a text or HTML editor and change www.example.com to the URL of the topic as it will be on the server. You can also use a relative path. With the topic in the root, the link will be ..\..\yourtopicname.htm
   I have amended that step to show the URL you require.
7. Save, generate and publish.

It is just 5 steps. Email me if you want the project where I have set this up.

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www.grainge.org

[Peter Grainge]

Sorry 6 steps. You have to make the same edit in topicfooter.htm as you did in homepagefooter.him.

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www.grainge.org

[Peter Grainge · Accepted solution]

I have now written this up more clearly in http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/rh2019/using_rh2019.htm Item 8

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www.grainge.org

[RoboFan]

Success! Huge thank you to Peter for figuring this out - and making his project available on his website so quickly. I needed it. Had the home page footer links working, but not the topic footer links. Looked at his project's topicfooter.htm and was able to determine that my custom footer's HTML links were missing the target="_blank" parameter. Inserting that into the code fixed the links. I'll update the bug I logged for this, but I still say it's valid to the extent that configuring custom footers that have links to other topics should be easier.

Again, thank you, Peter! 

[Peter Grainge]

It is easy now! ☺️

Glad it has got the show on the road. It was an interesting brain teaser. I will take it up with Adobe to see what can be done in a future release.